and welcome back to the big picture i'm sam sachs coming up in this half hour taxpayers in ohio we're told it's going to be a great deal just sell your state prison off to a private corporation and see what happens well the results are in there disastrous what will it take to reverse the corporate takeover of our comments and later you'll get to meet a billionaire who's trying to build the largest mansion in america but he might have to fire a few of his workers to get the job done so i'd still take why is this mystery

billionaire referred to as a job creator. so last year the corrections corporation of america or c.c.a. the largest private prison corporation in the nation approached the state of ohio with an offer the offer when something like this sell us your state owned prison and we'll run it for you at a lower cost to the taxpayers to republican governor john kasich that all sounded like a great idea so he signed on the dotted line and just like that the lake erie correctional institution once owned by the people of ohio was sold to the corrections corporation of america for seventy two point seven million dollars in return the state agreed to pay c.c.a. forty four dollars and twenty five cents per inmate per day as well as an

additional three point eight million dollars every year to cover wear and tear on the facility this is the first time ever in our nation's history that a state owned prison was sold off to a private corporation all together this deal was supposed to save the state three million dollars a year. almost year later we don't know whether or not this deal is actually saving taxpayers money in ohio but we do know that c.c.a. appears to be a pretty terrible prison manager a new audit released this week by the ohio department of rehabilitation and correction reveals that under private management the lake erie correctional institution is being woefully mismanaged the audit revealed that the prison is failing to meet state standards when it comes to sanitation food quality hygiene and several other areas also according to the audit inmates were not notified what to do in case of a fire emergency laundry and cell cleaning service or services were unavailable inmates in the infirmary were neglected and many prison cells were over occupied

but the corrections corporation of america is still making a lot of dough as it gets paid every time it receives a new inmate to lock up remember the state of ohio is paying c.c.a. more than forty four dollars every day for every inmate and let's assume for a moment that the state of ohio does end up saving money off this prison deal and that's a very tenuous assumption. is this still a good idea should we be handing over our prisons our commons to private corporations more focused on quarterly profits than corrections and rehabilitation let's ask my next guest austin peterson libertarian commentator and director of production at freedom one works and welcome back to the show thank you very much so we've got to you're welcome we've got corporations running prisons is that a great idea what we've got about three to four percent of the nation's prisons being run by private corporations so most of the prisons the united states are run by the federal government and i certainly do sympathize with lucy a creep of corporations buying prisons i mean this is going to florida they're

going to bunch of states saying sell us your prisons they obviously want to do that and the florida department of management services is showing that is the taxpayers are getting a ten to twenty seven percent less expenditure rate for their prison so there are there are some bonuses to having privately run prisons in the united states and again it is a very small number of three to four you're ok so maybe that's one. tucson citizen in arizona where similar deal was made with c.c.a. found the taxpayers are losing three and a half million dollars a year so it's still up in the air whether or not this is actually a good deal for taxpayers but strictly on the idea of letting for profit corporations take over this part of our commons do you think that's a good idea well that's really difficult sam i mean i do sympathize with the liberal viewpoint we have over incarceration in this country we have like the highest prison population of the entire world and if a libertarian were rather president of the united states we would have way less prisoners because there would be all of the nonviolent drug offenders would be released and use it wouldn't have this sort of incarceration rates that we have right now but if you're going to have a system that's going to run unfortunate of prisons you know the government has the

the ability to set the law the lawmakers are setting the laws now it's up to us to decide how we want to have the enforcement of those laws the supreme court has held that v the adjudication or excuse me the forced one of these laws in the prison prison systems can be run by private systems and many of the private systems that are running today the one of the three to four. that i spoke of the united states are running out of profit and are running an efficient system that is a benefit to the taxpayers and if you want more revenue for programs like teachers and schools and highways and things that liberals all agree that the government responding then when you rather have that money go to things like the nationalised health care scheme that we have obamacare and things like that then go among them i don't agree it is the greatest giveaway to the private health insurance industry but let's not get off on it let's not get off on obamacare here but you say you keep saying running efficiently ok so i'm giving you that assumption other than what we're seeing in arizona where it looks like they're losing money right let's assume that let's assume that the way they run it efficiently is by crowding

prisoners into cells by neglecting your basic human services for prisoners is that a good idea i mean isn't that what happens when you inject the profit motive would have to something that should be it happens about but here's the thing if you're a prisoner and you sue the state it's much more difficult to sue the state than it is a suit private corporation prisoners have a lot more legal operations legal. well it's a lot easier to sue corporation it isn't to the state there's a lot of conflict of interest there because if a prison guard who works for the state has a deal with the governor then there's a chance he might get you know i'm going to go off on suing i'm just asking results of russians recantation remember if you're a prisoner in a jail cell i would much rather be run at a private run institution because if they screw up then i have right of recompensation i can go in and i can take them to court but it's really hard to take the state to court remember the state makes their own you know the state you take the king is going to sing the king song so there's a lot of corruption that goes on a state run facilities as well so they and their and there's a lot of mismanagement happens in both areas and i would like to see a lot less incarceration this in this country and if you're talking about things

like rehabilitation you have to look at the receipt of ation rates between prisoners state run facilities and the private run facilities where they have these these programs that the inmates participate in educational vocational my skills program and seventy nine point three percent of prisoners in the in the private sector participate in these programs versus twenty one point three percent in the public eye because you've got your numbers i've got mine in idaho she's. prisons are a lot more violent in arizona they cost a lot more in the ok let's let's talk about the let's just let's take it a little bit broader you're right about the for profit motive just going to common sense in. detroit we have water and sewage plant that belong to the city that just got sold off to a private corporation we have you know parking meters in chicago being sold off and things like that we have education schools being sold off these are all things that used to be part of the commons used to belong to the taxpayers and right government but i think if you see a danger of injecting the for profit motive into these thing you know because it all depends on what you think people's motives are if you think that state officials are somehow motivated by different things than private officials are then

i think that's a little bit naive and you have to understand that everybody is going to be motivated by profit everybody wants to make more money but if you want to make more money at the behest of the state you're taking taxpayer money versus it isn't my own motivated by what is it what c.e.o. that is his main motivation is to increase profits or do it yes absolutely but if the profits are made voluntarily from the people who are purchasing voluntarily purchase as a service that's a different thing like water you know i mean it's another thing if the taxpayer is coming in and saying i have to subsidize water for the entire community whereas if the community says we're all voluntarily purchasing water it's very it's force and coersion versus voluntary interaction i want to voluntary society not of course of society sam overhead costs when it comes to health insurance and a course of society overhead cost becomes health insurance private health insurance companies it's about twenty percent overhead cost medicare it's about one point three percent a lot of that has to do with the profit motive there when it comes to delivering health care more efficiently and that goes across all sectors so when you when you inject a profit motive into delivering water suddenly you have a much higher overhead when you inject that into running correctional facilities

suddenly you have a much higher overhead is that by the very nature of the way private corporations operate that they're going to cost more to to meet that we're not going to silly actually because under the statutory authority in ohio where this prison is being run any outsourcing of private facilities have to save at least five percent on operational costs you see in a state one facility doesn't have that sort of a profit incentive if they don't. have a profit incentive then they have no reason to compete to keep costs low so if you do have a private run facility then they are forced by the contract that they have they're obligated to keep their costs at a competitive rate and the state is obligated to fill those prisons at ninety percent to maximize profit build if those of them which i actually do disagree with and the united kingdom has a new program that they're running right now where they incentivize rather than force ninety percent rate of incarceration they incentivize the prisons by saying that you have to have to show a reduced recidivist rates which means that they have to show that prisoners are not coming back and committing violent crimes again so i think the u.k. has a great model there florida is just starting to institute

a right now but the incentive should not be how many prisoners we have it should be how many prisoners are not coming back into the jail ok when it comes to i want to move on to our energy sector here ok we've got we've got to oil companies running around you know not deciding they're not going to cut their carbon emissions whether you believe in global warming or not i don't know you don't have to answer that i doubt you do a lot of evidence shows that there is a mormon yes ok whatever you want to say about it it's definitely cheaper in the long run to start transitioning to some sort of alternative energy it's cleaner for everybody the cancer rates cannot be denied when a corporation does focus strictly on quarterly profits where's the incentive to lose out on those quarterly profits for a few years to make that transition to clean energy without some sort of government to step in and provide those incentives for companies that want to start up in move toward alternative energy of just to go to school question kind of thing is that where is the incentive right so who are the people that are consuming the energy right i think that the burden of the cost of energy should be placed on those

people who are producing the energy and those who are consuming the energy so for example if i go and i fly an airplane i have to pay for the cost of the energy that flies the plane that fuels the plane so the people who are consuming the energy should have to pay the costs for whatever it is to work that industry and to pay those energy costs so that's where the burden should be and we'll wait for the people to sell that while the world burns. waters rise i think is awesome thanks i'll never get. you've got some weeds in the garden everyone knows that you can find some pretty interesting and unusual things at flea markets but one elderly couple in england got more than they bargained for the couple from bedford shire england purchased what they thought was an average run of the mill straw about a local village flea market and they planted it in their backyard well as time went

by and as the plant thrived in the couple's backyard it became clear that this was no ordinary backyard shrub the couple had knowingly planted one monstrous marijuana plant check that thing out it's pretty massive yeah the plan was so large that the local police took notice of it and like a bunch of squares ended up seizing it this past week at the local police used their twitter page to report these semi drug bust waiting quote seized today elderly couple bought about a car boot sale tended carefully the biggest cannabis plant we had seen and quote the elderly couple are not facing any criminal charges the flea market on the other hand can't keep their shrubs on the shelf. coming up how do billionaires who lay off thousands of american workers and outsource jobs overseas get labeled as job creators makes no sense to me either well an answer in tonight's

daily to. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harkin welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that many americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my country music stars are a fool you know what kind of mind their terror cells in your neighborhood all want to give us a defeat terrorism a limp all the christian point you. can stick your beliefs about it's. going to support you to distract us from what you and i should care about because their profit driven industry that sells of sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i'm happy martin and we're going to break that.

right now it's time for tonight's the good the bad and the very very rosario riotously ugly the good rekha why is a lie is the c.e.o. of the cell. carolina based red ventura is an internet marketing firm has set up a scholarship fund for students in north carolina who are undocumented immigrants like in most states undocumented immigrants are not eligible for college financial aid programs in north carolina and also have to pay out of state tuition rather than in-state tuition which is substantially less speaking about the efforts elias said that quote this is not a political statement it's about helping kids and putting those kids through college only makes this a better country a good job making lou dobbs this head explode. now the bad puns von

spakovsky. who works at the heritage foundation was speaking at the colorado conservative political action conference yesterday and during a panel discussion on voter suppression id laws makovsky said that the laws are doing quote a favor her merican so you don't have photos i.d.'s riots because condemning a single mother with three jobs to a day of losing pay and standing in line at the d.m.v. is a real favor and denying that same woman the right to vote if she doesn't do that that's a real favor to han's i for one don't want any favors from mr von spakovsky. and now the very very ugly the t.s.a. we are not the t.s.a. has hit a new low t.s.a. agents at seattle tacoma airport forced michelle do know who is tragically dying from leukemia to lift up her shirt in public so they could inspect her bandages in medical treatment tubes for potential threats. to knowledge was on her way to visit

her family in hawaii for maybe the last time when she was stopped and humiliated by the t.s.a. between irradiating porno scanners built thanks to crony capitalism and the sexual harassment of travelers of all ages the t.s.a. will stop at nothing to shred our civil liberties for the sake of perceived security and that is very very ugly. so i want you to meet billionaire c.e.o. david siegel here he is on the right here with actor sylvester stallone and former nevada governor jim gibbons siegel is the owner of westgate resorts a luxury real estate in timeshare companies started in florida and is now the

biggest timeshare company in the world and here's a picture of him sitting on his golden all of our kit thrown with what appears to be a skinned white cat on what is likely his very expensive piano here something he sees a billionaire and well lazy boys there for the proles he's also what republicans would call a job creator or he was till he fired off an e-mail this week to all of his employees threatening to lay them off if barack obama wins a second term that's a write in a letter addressed to quote all my valued employees billionaire job creator david segal writes quote in spite of all of the challenges we have faced the good news is this the economy doesn't currently pose a threat to your job what does threaten your job however is another four years of the same presidential administration if any new taxes are levied on me or my

company as our current president plans i will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company. there's a pretty obvious subtext to this email vote for mitt romney or i'll fire you but beyond politics there's something incredibly selfish about this e-mail here's a guy who's worth more money than any of his employees can ever imagine and he's telling them that should brock obama be reelected and should the president actually succeed this time and making the super rich like david segal pay their fair share in taxes again which would only be a modest three percent tax increase then he will maintain his riches by firing them and by taking away their paychecks after all he's a job creator so he would know how to spend money better than his lowly workers right so how exactly is david segal currently trying to spend his money while he's trying to build the biggest house in america. never to build that they discussed it

just and have and it's bigger than the white house to get as close. to the size of this bill. gates or the charity thousand square feet. no this is a room that's my closet. that's his wife and that's the massive house they're building so here there we have an eccentric billionaire attempting to build a modern day verse side to live in and threatening his employees that should the president raise his taxes that is their heads that will roll and for some reason that i can understand and today's political debate this guy is considered a job creator well if you're wondering how labels like this are created how billionaires like siegel are in the term of job creator while threatening to kill jobs and it's time you learn a little lesson about one thing which in the power of words and that is the subject of tonight's daily tick. for progressives to be republicans they need to know how

republicans talk luckily republicans occasionally let their lingo slip like back in one thousand nine hundred eighty six when newt gingrich's gopac memo was leaked which instructed republicans on what specific words to use when talking about other republicans and conservative policies and which words to use when talking about democrats and progressive policies the memo reads language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party we believe that you could have a significant impact on your complaint and your campaign and the way you communicate if we helped a little that is why we have created this list of words and phrases when talking about republican panic campaigns newt gingrich wrote use these words. commitment drene family freedom liberty passion prosperity strength the vision success. he wrote next time you watch a republican actually he didn't write that i did next time i had a republican you watch a republican campaign can't campaign at play

a little drinking game with how often you hear these words used again bridge memo then lays out the words to be used when describing democratic campaigns words like bizarre bureaucracy coercion corruption devour in danger liberal pathetic shame taxes welfare. these may seem like trivial words that don't have an effect when it comes to political messaging words are extremely important as right wing pollster frank luntz pointed out during the health care debate back in two thousand and nine . if you call it a public option the american people are split if you call it the government option the public is overwhelmingly against it you know what it's a great point and i'm from now on all couldn't call of the government because. fox so called news took the bait and executive bill sammon sent out an e-mail to his team of talking heads saying friendly reminder let's not slip back into calling it the public option please use the term government run health insurance or when

brevity is a concern government option whenever possible like sheep the talking heads over at fox so-called use obeyed frank a lot some self is quite a wordsmith back in two thousand and six luntz wrote a memo for republicans identifying certain words they should never say and instead offering replacement words as long as writes in his memo sometimes it is not what you say that matters but what you don't say from today forward you are the language police from today forward these are the words never to say again and here they are this is the republican game plan actually where they are never say government instead you know rule that out and say washington never say tax reform instead say tax simplification never say estate tax instead say the death tax. never say capitalism instead say free market out of this is this is the republican mame is to

is to is to always go in that direction never say undocumented workers instead say illegal aliens never say drilling for oil instead say exploring for energy never skate school choice and says a sequel opportunity in education and never say health care choice instead say the right to choose so you get at the this is very very systematic manipulation of language in the american political discourse this is the republican game plan laid out and this is the only way they can win elections this and disenfranchising people keeping people from voting voter id laws and things like that but basically this by boiling down often complex issues where the right answer can only be found through rigorous debate and turning them into quick easy to remember catch phrases and buzz words let's eliminate the dead debate around how much people like paris hilton should pay in a state taxes stead just call it

a dreaded death tax let's eliminate the debate over how we should handle undocumented immigrants and instead dehumanize them by calling them illegal aliens forget about debating the safety of deepwater oil drilling after the b.p. gulf disaster now oil companies are just exploring for energy. you know the sad thing much of this is worked and sure enough we've stopped having rational debate in this country. emotional words are now used to grab people's attention and transform their minds and it's largely these little sound bites and commercials on t.v. replace the role of debate among the electorate. president obama has boiled down to a socialist with little discussion of what a socialist really is i doubt most americans know rich people are called job creators with little discussion about how jobs are really created new tax plans

like nine nine nine are praised for their simplicity rather than either their effectiveness or their just plain old flat out stupidity. one french political thinker alexis de tocqueville ventured to the united states the early nineteenth century they team thirty four as i recall to observe first hand what life was like in the new democratic nation he made this observation which he wrote his book democracy in america the greatest of america lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation but rather in her ability to repair faults throughout history our nation has repaired our faults through debate through an informed electorate making the right decisions but in a scorched earth bid to win elections republicans have destroyed that american tradition and replaced it with political manipulation and until we bring back real debate until the corporate media calls out republican talking points and you and i

call out people who throw phrases around like job creators illegal aliens. then we frankly won't be able to solve the complex problems facing our nation. we're americans so let's start acting like americans and demanding that our politicians and most importantly our media treat us like the well informed citizenry the thomas jefferson patient. and that's the way it is tonight when it is day october tenth two thousand and twelve more information on any of the stories we covered this is our website the tom hartman dot com free speech or going r t dot com and if you missed any of tonight's show you can now watch it in h.d. on hulu at hulu dot com slash the big picture also check out our to you tube channels their links have thom hartmann dot com also at tom dot com check out all of different ways you can send us your feedback. and don't forget as tom always says democracy begins with you begins when you get out there and start occupying

something so get out there get active tag you're it and we'll see tomorrow. we'll see the. technology innovation all the latest developments around russia. the future.

wealthy british style. markets why not succumb to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on. the for. the for. the folks.